Dyer's straits

Finding passages to spiritual peace will be the focus of a talk by author Wayne Dyer.

Posted: Saturday, October 19, 2002

It's OK to be unmotivated, a motivational speaker says.

Even he's not keyed up all the time.

"There's nothing wrong with resting for a day," said Wayne Dyer.

"Not putting pressure on yourself, to get quiet and observe."

Dyer spoke from a friend's home in Port Washington on Long Island during what he called a Nor'easter.

"I'm sitting in this bed and looking at this beautiful storm," he said. "It's kind of fun to watch it. It's exciting.

"I'm going to go out and walk in it in a while."

Dyer talked a week before he will travel to Savannah as the last speaker in the Memorial Health 2002 lecture series that has explored mind-body connections in medicine.

When he's introduced onto the Johnny Mercer Theater stage on Thursday, he will recite a motto to himself, the same one he says right before he writes and before he lectures.

"If you knew who walked beside you at all times, on this path that you have chosen, you could never experience fear or doubt again."

It's an idea from "A course in Miracles," a decades-old self-study in spiritual psychology.

With it, he knows he's not alone. There's a guiding spiritual presence, he said.

That's why he won't use notes. He'll speak from the heart.

It will be the first time Brynn Grant hears him.

She discovered Dyer accidentally over a decade ago while studying at the University of Georgia. She started listening to his tapes, "How to be a no-limit person," on trips home to Hinesville.

Although she already was a motivated, positive person, Dyer reinforced that energy, she said.

"Certainly Wayne Dyer is not the inventor of motivation," said Grant, director of marketing and communications for the Savannah Music Festival, formerly Savannah Onstage.

"But when I came across his material, I made a connection. Who knows what made me open to the message at that one point. I related to his energy. He's an exciting speaker."

Yet, Dyer dislikes the label, "motivational speaker."

He can't make anyone do anything. Only they can motivate themselves, he said.

He considers himself a teacher who espouses spirituality and higher consciousness more then motivation.

"I just present common-sense ideas that are out there," he said. "And project into the microphones of the world what I'm feeling inside."

On Thursday, he's expected to talk about ideas from his newest book, "10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace," which, among other things, says creativity comes out of silence.

"I think most of us are terrified of silence," Dyer said.

"Some of my most beautiful moments are in silence. I meditate every day."

When he walks off Savannah's stage, he will leave no instructions for his audience. He just hopes to be informative, interesting, entertaining and educational.

Whatever his listeners do with his stories is up to them.

"Some will decide they're never going to be sick again, some will think they can change the way they relate to their spouses and children and some will think it's a lot of nonsense and hogwash," he said.

"Everyone will be right. If that's how they believe, that's how it will be applied in their lives."

Dyer says he is not attached to the outcome, even if it's positive.

"You have to be independent of the good opinions of other people," he said. "You have to live your life by what your heart tells you inside, not how someone else reacts to it.